Movie Rundown | 2009 Oscar Contenders (Part 1)

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
Genre: Comedy; Director: Danny Boyle
Stars: Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor, Freida Pinto

After watching the film, I felt disappointed. I wasn’t expecting myself to like it. But I DID. Tremendously.  Haha. And this might be the first time that I’m rooting for an Oscar frontrunner. (Two years ago, I liked Little Miss Sunshine better than The Departed; Crash than Brokeback Mountain; Munich than Brokeback Mountain; The Hours than Chicago.) But then again I haven’t seen The Reader yet. But so far, Slumdog gets all my loving.

People say that there’s nothing new to the story. It’s the same old third-world rags-to-riches plot. But like my Screenwriter mentor said, all stories have been told, it’s HOW you tell the story. Although I’m not sure I agree to that, it certainly applies to Slumdog. What’s amazing about it is how the story is told — how it used an old game show as a vehicle of a usual plot and a foreign setting and culture to make it look brand new. But the truth is, most of the time I don’t care if the story is fresh. What matters to me is if it’s yummy and spicy. And boy is it yummy and spicy.

One awesome thing that I especially liked about this movie is how the setting, Mumbai, seems to have a life of its own. It’s like one well-developed character, reminiscent of City of God, only happy.  It changes and grows with the characters. And I sympathized with it. Mumbai is more alive and active than Benjamin Button (haha).

Slumdog Millionaire, although revolving around the many not-so-pretty things about life, is brimming with optimism. It takes us to a life-long journey of a man, who proves that despite life’s infinite hardships — that vicious cycle of overcoming obstacles and then life making some more — there’s always something or someone that can give us that reason to move forward. It narrates his desperate struggles to find it. And to hell with everyone, he will find it.

It’s hard to believe that this is from the same director who bought us 28 Days Later, Trainspotting and Sunshine. But whatever, he managed to incorporate excellent screenplay, editing, cinematography and music and come up with something uplifting.

And oh, I think it’s just about time for an Oscar Best Picture that does not leave us depressed and suicidal, taking a dose of  life’s bitter pills, and wanting to kill ourselves to get out of misery. It doesn’t hurt to feel good.  5.0

…

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Genre: Drama, Fantasy; Director: David Fincher
Stars: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is stuffed with dualities — young and old, birth and death. Unfortunately for Benjamin, the two words that came to my mind after seeing it were long and cold.

First of all, I have to say I am a bit disappointed because I love almost everything and everyone in this film. David Fincher is one of my most-loved directors. Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton are some of my fave actors. But amidst the amazing visual display and the technical brilliance, this film awfully lacks something integral — emotional coherence.

The movie is just almost devoid of motion and emotions. To be fair to the actors, they did a good job. But the screenplay and direction do not harness the magnitude of emotions that the concept required. It’s just a cold film. I’m blaming the main character — Benjamin. No, not Brad Pitt but Benjamin Button himself. I know he’s acutely miserable because of his condition but that’s exactly the problem. He, being so emotionally distant, passive and impenetrable, is someone that is so hard to be attached with. It’s hard to relate to him not just because he’s a freak of nature but also because he’s cold.

The whole film feels like it’s about something interesting that happened to a very uninteresting person. And if you think about it, how much do we really know about Benjamin? The only thing we know about what’s going inside his head is that he loves Daisy. But what about his other desires? Aspirations? Ambitions?

I wasn’t even touched. Not even once. Or maybe it was me who was cold.

And yes, it is unnecessarily lengthy. I was bored to death. Or at least, I felt like I got several years older. And there I was thinking, Was it supposed to bore me? Maybe that’s the intention? But whatever, I’ve been delightfully bored by some movies before. But this ennui wasn’t pretty.

To be fair, this film is a technical masterpiece. Despite its biting stagnancy, I STILL LIKE IT! It almost gave me a visual orgasm several times throughout the film. I just wish there was more to it than its looks. Apparently, Benjamin is someone you’d be curious to meet. But once you’ve known him, ah, ho-hum.  3.9

…

Doubt (2008)
Genre: Drama; Director: John Patrick Shanley
Stars: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis

My professors at Film school had always said that the measure of a good film is if you are still able to digest the story completely on first viewing after you turn it to mute. Stanley Kubrick also uttered something like that. In other words, it has to be visual. Show, don’t tell, they say. I believed that, too. Until I realized that sometimes, what is told is just as important as what is shown. Films can still be great even with the visuals fading subtly in the background. And I have proven that to myself through films like The Hours, Closer and most recently Doubt.

Doubt is a talkie. Yes, it has some moments of visual representation and it is semiotically rich. (Signs are littered all over the scenes.) But ultimately you won’t survive it if you don’t pay attention to what the characters say. Most of the time, things are said, not shown. But it shouldn’t be taken against the film because it works.

Doubt encourages our moral convictions and, at the same time, questions it. It paints a huge question mark on people’s dangerous tendencies to assume and come to conclusions easily and precariously.

The funny thing is, after watching the movie, you are left in the dark. You still don’t know what really happened. No closure. No shocking conclusion. Yet you are satisfied. There’s a certain comfort in not knowing. And that makes it more beautiful.

Doubt is simple, solid, and strong. Its density and potency it draws from its simple plot made complex by the characters’ strong emotions. It is safe to say that half of the film is its casting. Had the roles landed on people less talented than Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams, it could have been a disaster.

The best thing about this movie is that it can’t get any more realistic than its approach. It is admirable how the filmmakers decide to go against showing what could have been the “key” scenes in the film. Because in real life, we don’t really know. And we can’t always be sure about anything. In reality, when we choose who among the people involved is the one telling the truth or whom to side with, the only thing we have to base our judgment on are our instinct, our morals, and most especially, our faith in these people.

Then the cloud of doubt enters our head to blur that thin line of certainty because it finally sinks in. That the only thing we can rely on is not what we see but what we are told. And it pierces us because we know, although we can always doubt it, that it is true. That in most cases, we can never be sure.  4.5

Next: Revolutionary Road, Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Reader
images courtesy of firstshowing.net, washingtontimes.com, craigbe.com

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

If you liked this post, you might want to check out:

• Movie Rundown | 2009 Oscar Contenders (Part 2)
• Movie Rundown | Batman Edition
• Hugh Jackman to Host Oscars
• Movie Rundown | July 2008
• My Top 50 All-Time Favourite Films (Part 7)
• Movie Rundown | March 2008, Part 2
• Movie Rundown | March 2008, Part 1
• My Top 50 All-Time Favourite Films (Part 4)*
• Movie Review | Gray Matters (2007)
• And the Oscar Might Go to…